“We want to get it out to as many folks as we can before the elections take place,” says Bryan Vasquez of The Immigration Paradox, a new full-length documentary by Lourdes Lee Vasquez. Speaking of paradoxes, that explains why a film you’ve probably never heard of is having its world…
It’s difficult to choose this fall’s must-watch roster, since there’s so much happening — lots of it good, lots less so. In its dismal Friday night slot, the still-brilliant Fringe will embark on its final season, highly recommended for X-Files fans, JJ Abrams followers, and those wanting to gawk at…
Early on in Rian Johnson’s time-travel thriller Looper, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) sits at a diner and chats with his self from 30 years in the future (Bruce Willis). When the younger Joe asks the older one about the specifics of temporal displacement, the latter dismisses the question, telling his interlocutor…
Casting a tapered, vase-slender silhouette and speaking in a Transylvanian accent with a touch of Borscht Belt, Hotel Transylvania’s de-fanged Count Dracula is introduced in an 1895-set prologue while serenading his infant daughter. No menacing carnivore, this Nosferatu has sworn off fatty human blood, is more scared of humans than…
17 Girls (17 Filles), set in the small, depressed, French seaside town of Lorient, makes a big deal about having been inspired by a true story that took place in the small, depressed, American seaside town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 2008: Eighteen high school girls all turned up pregnant at…
“I hate realism,” director Genndy Tartakovsky says. “In America, especially, we’re very narrow-minded as far as animation goes. There is only one kind of movie, and that’s that big, family-oriented, four-quadrant, please-everyone kind of film. But if I wanted realism, I’d watch a live-action movie. Those lines are being blurred…
Those were trying times for Rome. Nero, the last of the Julio-Claudian Caesars and a big spender with a reputedly homicidal temper, was on the throne. Stories abound of how he attempted to poison his mother, kicked one of his wives to death, and personally ordered the upside-down crucifixion of…
“Death wasn’t being responded to as a public health problem,” David France says. “It was dealt with with sniggers. It was left to religious leaders to explain or respond to the epidemic. And they responded by calling it the wrath of God.” He adds: “That’s the hostility we all saw…
Here comes the finale of the show everyone loves to hate (and hates to love). Tonight, Honey Boo Boo Child Alana Thompson, along with her Mama June, Sugar Bear, and sisters will likely shock, confuse, and disgust an audience of millions that love/hates the reality show, which follows the Thompson…
After a nationally televised improv exercise that, for better or worse, offered more unvarnished reality than anything else at this year’s political conventions, Clint Eastwood returns in his first on-screen role in four years with Trouble With the Curve. The “empty chair” jokes practically make themselves. There is a scene…
Typically, the creators of comic-book adaptations assume that ingratiating themselves with anyone unfamiliar with their characters/properties demands boilerplate origin stories where protagonists exhaustively declare who they are in no uncertain terms. This is, thankfully, not true of Dredd, whose creators have the confidence to treat their narrative like just another…
You’ve Been Trumped, directed by Anthony Baxter, is a document of a humble American businessman who, through some perspicacity and Abe Lincoln-style bootstraps-hoisting, wins the land and homes of a bunch of primitive, chattering Scottish natives who obviously don’t use them to God’s and Ayn Rand’s intended purpose: for playing…
There’s something startlingly noncommittal about many of the initial reviews of The Master that leaked out following the impromptu screenings writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson organized in 70mm-equipped houses across the country, and later in response to the film’s official bow at the Venice Film Festival. This is perhaps the natural,…
Scottsdale International Film Festival is gearing up for its 12th annual showcase of independent films October 5 through 9 at Harkins Shea 14 Theater. The five-day-long event should provide moviegoers their fill with more than 35 films from the US, Denmark and Chile, among other countries. See also: Five Must-See…
See also: Threesomes at the Toronto Film Festival See also: New Film Queens of Country Has a Bizarre Vibe That Is Distinctly Arizona See also: NBC “Close” to Signing Deal with Two New Comics for SNL — Including Phoenix’s Aidy Bryant The way films come and go, in and out…
Spike Lee returns to the Brooklyn neighborhoods of his most famous works — including the celebrated Do the Right Thing — with Red Hook Summer, and an early shot suggests that this trip home has reinvigorated the director. Tracking his protagonists as they navigate a courtyard in the projects, meeting…
A re-release whose cash-grab intentions are as transparent as the crystal-clear Sydney ocean, Finding Nemo 3-D exists only to relieve parents of money for a movie they undoubtedly already own. Disney’s double-dip of Andrew Stanton’s beloved 2003 adventure features absolutely no new content — save for the boisterous prefacing short…
“I have always been against this idea of the ‘clash of cultures,'” Marjane Satrapi says. “It’s the biggest piece of bullshit I’ve ever heard.” That’s apparent from her films and graphic novels, which bridge worlds. Born in Iran, Satrapi emigrated to Europe with her family when she was a teenager…
In Los Angeles, when a film is referred to as “70mm” it usually means that the Aero is playing 2001 again. New releases in the format — which, as implied by its name, is a type of film stock larger and more expansive than standard 35mm -— are relatively rare…
The new, semi-gritty indie About Cherry is all about a semi-reluctant slide into the porn industry, and it’s also the first mainstream feature co-written by a busy porn actress, Lorelei Lee, otherwise famous for double penetrations and clothespin bondage. This shouldn’t strike us very strange. Every screenwriter needs a day…
A critic’s report from a film festival like Toronto, where something like 300 features were unveiled from September 6 through 16, can be something like a Rorschach test — or, at least, it can be something like the Rorschach test depicted in Paul Thomas Anderson’s TIFF entry, The Master, in…
Village Voice Media film critic Karina Longworth is soaking up the silver screen at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. Come back to Jackalope Ranch every day for dispatches from TIFF.See also: When Directors Love Their Stars: Frances Ha and Yellow at the Toronto Film Festival See also: How…
